The stories are coming in faster and furiouser as we get closer to the November Presidential Election, and as Republican Secretaries of State around the country scramble to exercise and/or abuse their power to game the system in favor of their party any way they legally-ish can do so.

So here are a few quick (and by no means complete) news updates on voter suppression techniques being implemented by GOP Secretaries of State over the past few days in Michigan, Iowa and Ohio, as this election, less than 100 days away, now begins to enter it's even uglier phase...

MICHIGAN

During Tuesday's primary election, at polling places across the state, voters were surprised and confused when they showed up to the polls and were asked to check a box confirming they were U.S. citizens before they were given a ballot. Some who refused to do so were, inappropriately, told they could not vote without doing so.

The GOP legislature, earlier this year, passed a law that would have enshrined such an affirmation requirement into the state election code. They also passed a disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction as well. But, to his credit (and it's difficult to give him credit for much of anything else), Republican Gov. Rick Snyder bucked --- and shocked --- his own party by vetoing the measures.

Republican Sec. Of State Ruth Johnson, however, didn't go out of her way to let counties know the citizenship affirmation had been vetoed. In fact, she did just the opposite, vowing to include the citizenship affirmation check box on ballot applications despite the veto of the legislation that would have enshrined it into law. The result, this week, was that some voters were required, including voters in Detroit, to affirm their citizenship (something which is already done, under penalty of perjury, when voters register in the first place) before being allowed to cast their vote.

Confusion reigned, much as Snyder had predicted when he vetoed the bill. "By midday," according to the Detroit Free Press, "the Secretary of State sent out a clarification to county and local clerks telling them not to enforce the citizenship declaration on the application."

"Clerks were told that if a voter refused to check the box they were to say to the voter: 'Under the Michigan Constitution and election laws you must be a citizen of the United States in order to vote.' And then the clerks were to hand the voter a ballot."

Johnson is one of the many new incredibly partisan Secretaries of State across the country on a rampage to make it harder to vote, under the guise of pretending that we have a massive polling place voter fraud problem in this country. We don't. Johnson doesn't care. Not if it might help her party this year somehow.

That effort was met by a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on Wednesday, charging that Schultz' rules were issued improperly in an abuse of his office.

According to AP, the new rules call for suspected non-citizens to be identified through an unknown process created by Schultz without oversight or explanation which, his office says, would be "contrary to the public interest."

If, through this magical, unoverseeable process, created with no public input, voters are believed to be ineligible to vote as non-citizens, "Schultz's office will send notice telling them they may be illegally registered, a class D felony, and should cancel their registrations immediately. They would be given 14 days to dispute the notice; if they fail to do so, Schultz's office would take steps to remove them from the list."

When Scott and Detzner tried the same process, as a BRAD BLOG investigation was able to discover, just 9 non-citizens were confirmed on the rolls, out of 11.2 million registered, from a similar list the pair had sent to county Supervisors of Elections. None of the 9 had cast a vote in Florida. Meanwhile, their purge did succeed in threatening the right to vote of folks like natural-born U.S. citizens like Bill Internicola, the 91-year old, Brooklyn-born, World War II veteran and Bronze Star recipient who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and Archibald Bowyer, another 91-year old WWII vet who has been a citizen since the age of 2. Bowyer received his letter, notifying he'd be purged unless he was able to prove his citizenship within 30 days (twice as long as that set for Iowa voters!), just as his wife had recently died.

Another "emergency rule" issued by the Iowa's Secretary Schultz, according to the ACLU, removes the requirement of signing a sworn statement when making an allegation of voter fraud. It should be a fun election this year in Iowa!

Schultz has long called for polling place Photo ID restrictions in Iowa, despite the dearth of evidence that anybody has ever committed voter fraud by in-person polling place impersonation --- the only type of voter fraud that can possibly be deterred by such measures --- in the state. Last year he sponsored a bill to require polling place Photo ID, but, thankfully, the measure was blocked by Democrats in the state Senate.

We already covered, in some detail, the Romney campaign's phony claims about the voting rights law suit filed by the Obama Campaign and DNC in Ohio to expand the right for all eligible voters in the state to cast an early vote in the three days before this November's election. That right was taken away by Ohio's Republican legislature and Governor this year for all but active duty military voters, even though it had been a tremendous success for voters in the Buckeye State ever since it was implemented following the disastrous 2004 Presidential Election when voters, in predominantly Democratic districts only, were forced to wait some 2 to 12 hours before casting their vote on Election Day.

But another aspect of this issue has come up of late, as Ari Berman flagged for us yesterday. County Boards of Elections around the state, are voting to open Early Voting locations after business hours and on weekends in Republican counties only, while limiting hours of operation from 8am to 5pm on weekdays only in Democratic-leaning counties.

Berman details very well how this will "disproportionately disenfranchise African-American voters in Ohio's most populous counties," among other problems, though he doesn't go into the details of Ohio's byzantine election procedures that have lead to this coming about. Cincinatti Enquirer's Barry Horstman details it pretty well.

What's happening is this: In Ohio, County Boards of Elections are "bi-partisan", in that they are split, 50/50 Republican and Democratic in each of the state's 88 counties (supposedly, though we had a great deal of evidence after 2004 showing that some of the "Democrats" on those boards had never voted in a Democratic primary in their lives, until just prior to being appointed to the Board of Elections by then criminally partisan Sec. of State and co-chair of Bush/Cheney '04 Inc., J. Kenneth Blackwell.)

When the boards split a vote on any particular issue --- such as how long to keep Early Voting locations open --- the Sec. of State is called in to break the tie. So where Boards of Elections are holding votes in Republican areas, both the R and D members of the Boards are voting in favor of expanded Early Voting hours.

In Democratic-leaning counties, however, Republicans on the Boards are voting against expanded Early Voting hours, while Democrats are voting for it (just as they are consistently doing in Republican counties as well.) That is resulting in tie votes in some of the state's largest, and most Democratic-leaning counties.

Coming in to break the tie is Republican Sec. of State Jon Husted, and he has been siding, in each case when called, with the Republicans in favor of not expanding Early Voting hours.

The result: Expanded Early Voting hours in Republican areas of Ohio this year, no expanded Early Voting hours in Democratic areas. [Update: See map of affected counties here.]

In the case of his votes against expanded Early Voting hours in Democratic counties, however, he has some serious 'splaining to do.

In Horstman's piece, a letter from the Secretary to the Franklin County Board of Elections is quoted, in which Husted explains his decision to vote against expanding Early Voting hours. "I cannot create unequal access from one county board to another," he claims, "and I must also keep in mind the resources available to each county."

If Husted is truly concerned about "unequal access" for voters in differing counties, a legitimate concern, he would vote in favor of expanded hours when called upon, since that is what is already happening in Republican leaning counties in the Buckeye State. Moreover, while the Secretary of State in Ohio doesn't have the statutory power to order that Early Voting polls stay open later on some weekdays and for some weekend voting, he can issue a directive, strongly encouraging all Boards in the state to do so.

He hasn't. And he has helped to make access more unequal, rather than less, in the bargain. We've avoided describing Husted, so far, as "incredibly partisan", as we're more than comfortable describing Michigan's Secretary Johnson and Iowa's Secretary Schultz (not to mention Florida's Secretary Detzner), but Husted is making it very difficult, at this point, to see his decisions in these cases as anything but partisan, and an extreme disservice to the voters of Ohio who he is supposed to be serving.

That adds the name Jon Husted to a growing list of high level Republicans, including Mitt Romney, who have been accused of false residency voter fraud --- a form of voter fraud that cannot be prevented by polling place Photo ID laws.

Most have never been prosecuted. Indiana Sec. of State Charlie White (R) was convicted of three counts of felony voter fraud (6 felonies in all). But, of course, being a Republican, he only received one year of home detention.

In our previous coverage of the Sunshine State's failed voter purge, we noted that Judge Hinkle had denied the DoJ's request for a temporary restraining order only because Sec. of State Ken Detzner's attorneys had advised the court that Detzner had suspended the purge and promised that it would not resume. Hinkle had advised the parties the DoJ could return to court seeking a TRO against individual County Supervisors of Elections should they continue the purge.

We had also documented how the SOEs in Collier and Lee County had failed to verify non-citizenship status for most of those who were removed from the rolls.

In their complaint, the DoJ had also sought an order that would direct reinstatement of those improperly removed.

It now appears that the DoJ is following up on reinstating those who were improperly removed. The DoJ has now served subpoenas to the SOEs in Miami-Dade, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange, Collier, Lee, and Bay Counties which will identify who has been removed; reinstated.

Why would someone oppose Michigan's requirement that people voting be U.S. Citizens? It is actually federal law. To obtain the right to vote, you must be a U.S. Citizen. That's why many foreign immigrants choose to become citizens, to have a say in how the country they live in is governed.

@ Tim Disselkoen: because the voter already demonstrated they were a US citizen when they registered to vote. No one is questioning that. What is being done is to harass voters AT THE POLLS. If you hear 'Felony Class D' wouldn't that make you reluctant to check a little box because maybe you might be wrong? Better safe than sorry? Especially if English is your second language?

Why would someone oppose Michigan's requirement that people voting be U.S. Citizens?

Sorry Tim, but you missed the point, entirely!

Every state in the union requires that only citizens can vote. That requirement is assured when citizens attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are indeed U.S. citizens when they register to vote.

The new legislation, enacted by the GOP controlled legislature but vetoed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder did not alter Michigan's requirement that only U.S. citizens can vote. Instead, it provided an opportunity to intimidate perfectly legal voters at the polls as part of an effort to suppress the vote.

What you should really be asking, Tim, is why, with the pivotal 2012 election approaching, the GOP legislators in MI suddenly decided that it was necessary to question voters about a phantom menace?

In a 2007 report [PDF], Law Prof. Justin Levitt of NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, wrote:

We are not aware of any documented cases in which individual noncitizens have either intentionally registered to vote or voted while knowing that they were ineligible. Given that the penalty (not only criminal prosecution, but deportation) is so severe, and the payoff (one incremental vote) is so minimal for any individual voter, it makes sense that extremely few noncitizens would attempt to vote, knowing that doing so is illegal.

Although there are a few recorded examples in which noncitizens have apparently registered or voted, investigators have concluded that they were likely not aware that doing so was improper.

Ohio voting restrictions? Is this a replaynof 2004? Remember Tom Noe amd his wife Bernadette? Bernadette was a Lucas County election official, and made sure voters in Lucas experienced as much difficulty voting as possible? And both were major Bush funders? And Tom went to jail for straw donations? And Tom was connected to Karl Rove at the hip? Hope everyone is ready for another stolen election... The cards are setting up again for it.

Michigan require a birth certificate both to get an initial driver's license and to register to vote. Ruth Johnson is a far right wing Teabaggin gal from Oakland County. She comes from an area of old fashioned southern values! She makes up her own rules and regularly defies our governor! Why would I have to keep affirming my citizenship to satisfy the paranoia of some low IQ Teabagger.

It's dangerous for any citizen to allow this kind of voter fraud take place. If there is not a respected 'equality' in the treatment of voters, it is only a matter of time that it is your vote itself that is affected in a negative way. The Wheel turns no matter what we want, sometimes you're on top, sometimes not so much, you should make the rules so that you're happy with how you will be treated when you are down.

Also, It’s un-American. We all know it and it is blatant, if this is rewarded or ignored, elections will cease to have meaning or mandate.

What former Florida GOP State Chair Jim Greer is describing in this video link is a conspiracy to use public office and﻿ the legislative process, to purposely target a specific segment of the populous for voter disenfranchisement. He should end up as a witness to a federal crime.

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]...
Kelly St. John
said on 8/15/2012 @ 10:03 am PT...

I think a good answer to the GOP's attempt to skim off potential democratic voters by requiring valid ID's would be to require ALL voters to obtain the same ID and that this "official" voter ID be the only one that would allow anyone to cast a vote.